“Kansas City, Here I Come…”

You know what I learned today? Kansas City isn’t in Kansas. It’s in Missouri.

Now I’m all for people having fun with names, but honestly? There’s a little something called truth in advertizing too….

I learned this interesting fact because I’m going to a convention down there this weekend (Memorial Day weekend.) I’m Guest of Honor at ConQuest.

And just so Kansas won’t feel sad, I’m going to be doing a reading/signing there too. It’s the Thursday before the convention (the 23rd) at Mysteryscape in Overland Park.

So, you have been warned. Grab me when I’m in the area, because I don’t know when I’ll be back again….

(Note: Please don’t actually grab me.)

Edit: Just to make it clear, I’m also doing readings and signings at the convention itself all weekend. Plus at the convention I’m going to be on a bunch of panels about writing, worldbuilding, humor, etc etc.

The main reason I’m in town is because of the convention, and if you want to see a lot of me, that’s the place to go.

(Note: “By see a lot of me” what I really mean is “See me a lot.”)

I’m doing the bookstore event for people who don’t like conventions, can’t afford them, or who are busy over the weekend.

Just to clear that up.

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In other news, I did something horrible in Florida.

Or rather, I tried to do something nice in Florida and I screwed it up.

Earlier this month when I did a signing in Bradenton, we ran out of books. I felt bad about that, as some folks had driven for hours and weren’t going to be able to buy books and get them signed.

So I told people that if they wrote their names and e-mail addresses down, we’d contact them and arrange to sell them some signed books for what they’d have been able to buy them for at the store.

I passed around the notebook, about 30 people wrote down their names….

…and now I can’t find the list.

I’ve looked everywhere. It’s not in my luggage. It’s not in the store. It’s not where we were staying in Florida, or in the car we drove around in….

It’s just gone.

I feel really bad about this, and I want to make it right, so here’s what we’re going to do…

We sell a bunch of stuff in The Tinker’s Packs, T-shirts, jewelry, posters, and signed copies of my books.

Because all the money from The Tinker’s Packs goes to charity, we normally charge more than the cover price of the books. But for the folks who were in Florida, we’re going to charge the cover price and eat the shipping cost ourselves.

(I’d love to give you even more of a deal, but the books actually cost us money….)

So. If you were at that signing and you didn’t get a book, here’s what I’d like you to do.

1. Go onto The Tinker’s Packs.

2. Order whatever books you like.

3. When you go to Paypal, click on the “Note to seller” field.

(Click to Embiggen)

4. Type in “I was in Florida”

5. Type in whatever you’d like your personalization to be.

6. Complete your order.

• Note: The total will not be right.

7. When we process the order, we will refund some of your money.

If you want to buy some other stuff too, nothing would make me happier. Worldbuilders appreciates your support. But I’m afraid you’ll have to pay regular price for the other stuff.

What’s to stop *everyone* from jumping in and claiming they were at the event to get cheaper books?

First, we *will* be mailing this stuff to you. So if you say you were at the signing, then ask us to mail something to Ireland… Well… we’ll be a little skeptical.

Plus there’s the whole human decency thing. My readers have shown themselves to be cool, caring, generous folks. You’d have to be a bit of a wanker to try to screw a charity that’s trying to feed hungry kids, and my readers aren’t like that.

Right? Right.

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Lastly, since we’re on the topic of the store….

We have a few new items in there, for those of you who haven’t peeked in for a while.

The newest and coolest of those are the signed copies of Beatrice’s Goat.

This is the book that first sold me on how cool Heifer International was. I like it so much I recorded a video of me reading it to Oot a while back.

The books we have in the store right now are extra-cool because they’re signed.

But wait. They’re even cooler than that. They’re not just signed by the author (Page McBrier) Not just signed by the illustrator (Lori Lohstoeter).

These copies are signed by Beatrice Biira herself, the woman the book was based on.

Beatrice has grown up since the book was published in 2001, and she’s gone on to great things. She got her BA, then went on to get her Master’s degree. (And I’m willing to bet money she got better grades than me when she was doing it.)

Suffice to say that we only have a limited number of these books. If you want one, you might want to grab it quickly.

*     *     *

Finally, we’re probably going to pull the calendar out of the store pretty soon, since the time for buying calendars is pretty much past. For those of you who want one as a collectable, or who are like me and tend to be forgetful about things like buying calendars: fair warning. In a week or so, we’re probably going to take it down.

But for now it’s still there, and it’s at half price.

That’s all for now, folks. More news soon.

Cool news.

Soon.

pat